Computers and other electronic devices have become integral tools used in a wide variety of different applications, such as in finance and commercial transactions, computer-aided design and manufacturing, health care, telecommunication, education, etc. Computers along with other electronic devices are finding new applications as a result of advances in hardware technology and rapid development in software technology. Furthermore, the functionality of a computer system or other type of electronic device is dramatically enhanced by coupling these type of stand-alone devices together in order to form a networking environment. Within a networking environment, users may readily exchange files, share information stored on a common database, pool resources, and communicate via electronic mail (e-mail) and video teleconferencing. Furthermore, computers along with other types of electronic devices which are coupled to the Internet provide their users access to data and information from all over the world. Computer systems have become useful in many aspects of everyday life both for personal and business uses.
Included within this broad category of computers and electronic devices is the personal digital assistant (commonly referred to as a PDA). Specifically, as the components required to build a computer system have been greatly reduced in size, new categories of computer systems have emerged. One of these new categories of computer systems is the personal digital assistant. A personal digital assistant is a portable computer system which is small enough to be held in the hand of its user and can be “palm-sized.” Additionally, some personal digital assistants are enhanced with the capability to be coupled to the Internet using wired or wireless technology thereby providing their users access to an extremely large amount of data and information. However, there are disadvantages associated with personal digital assistants accessing the Internet.
For example, one of the disadvantages is that Internet web pages are typically developed for color display screens having a resolution of 800×600 or larger and it does not scale very well to the very small display screens that are typically implemented with personal digital assistants. As such, several different techniques have been developed in order to enable personal digital assistants to handle web pages from the Internet.
One of the techniques for enabling personal digital assistants to handle web pages from the Internet is referred to as web scraping. Within one variety of web scraping, one or more persons actually view an original web page on the Internet and determine which content is relevant and how to arrange it for the small display screens of personal digital assistants. Next, the scraped web content of the original web page is stored by a special web server which is accessible by personal digital assistants. Therefore, personal digital assistants are able to receive the scraped web page content of the original web page from the special web server. It should be appreciated that once a web page has been scraped, personal digital assistants users are usually notified in some manner where to access the scraped web page.
There are disadvantages associated with the web scraping technique described above. For example, personal digital assistants are typically only able to access web content from web pages which have previously been scraped. That is, personal digital assistants are not provided the freedom of accessing any web page on the Internet. Instead, personal digital assistants are limited to access pre-made (scraped) web pages. Furthermore, personal digital assistants are unable to access web pages by using their direct URL (Uniform Resource Locator). Instead, web scraping technologies involve personal digital assistant users going to another location (e.g., URL) in order to access web page content. It should be understood this may be unattractive to personal digital assistant users because they desire the convenience of just typing in the URL and accessing its corresponding web page.
Another technique for enabling personal digital assistants to handle web pages from the Internet is to utilizes a transcoding proxy server. Specifically, instead of a personal digital assistant accessing web pages of the Internet directly, it requests web pages from a transcoding proxy server. However, before delivering the requested web pages to the requesting personal digital assistant, the transcoding proxy server typically performs a “best guess” transcoding of the web pages which may involve stripping out all of the web content (e.g., images, Java, JavaScript, tables, etc.) that the small display screen of the personal digital assistant is unable to handle. Subsequently, the transcoding proxy server transmits the remaining web content to the personal digital assistant.
However, there are disadvantages associated with the “best guess” transcoding technique performed by transcoding proxy servers. For example, one disadvantage is that the “best guess” transcoding technique provides a very poor quality web page product (from the view of web page providers and personal digital assistant users) to personal digital assistants.
Yet another technique for enabling personal digital assistants to handle web pages from the Internet is referred to as web clipping. Specifically, the web clipping technique involves installing a web clipping application on a personal digital assistant for each web page that its user desires to receive information from. Typically, when activated, a web clipping application transmits a request to an Internet server for limited web content (commonly referred to as a web clipping) from a specific web page. It is appreciated that a web clipping is a compressed HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) page which is transmitted by the Internet server to the requesting personal digital assistant.
It should be appreciated that there are disadvantages associated with the web clipping technique. For example, personal digital assistants using the web clipping technique have limited access to the Internet. Specifically, if a personal digital assistant does not have a web clipping application corresponding to a specific web page, it is unable to access web content from that web page. Therefore, a web clipping application has to be developed by someone for every web page a personal digital assistant user desires to access. Furthermore, another disadvantage with the web clipping technique is that a personal digital assistant is unable to request web clippings from a specific web page until the corresponding web clipping application has been installed on the personal digital assistant. In other words, the Internet access of a personal digital assistant is limited by the web clipping applications installed on it.